Light Peak: What is it?

Recent rumors have revealed that the new MacBook Pros for Apple’s 2011 revamp will feature a new technology called “Light Peak”. What exactly is “Light Peak?” Why is this so special?

What exactly is Light Peak?

Light Peak is a new technology developed by Intel that allows for high bandwidth data transfer via an optical cable – in short, it’s like a really cool and powerful USB cable. Light Peak is said to offer transfer speeds of 10 GB per second, which is more than double that of USB 3.0’s 4.8 GB per second transfer rate.

Light Peak, Apple, and the New MacBooks

There’s a lot of speculation of Intel showing off this brand new high-speed data transferring technology tomorrow on a set of brand new MacBook Pros. To spice things up a little further, Light Peak will apparently be branded as “Thunderbolt” (shazam!).

It is almost certain that Light Peak, sorry, “Thunderbolt” technology will be proprietarily Apple – similar to what they’ve done with FireWire. However, I guess we’ll just all have to wait patiently for Apple to roll the new MacBook Pros out to us tomorrow.